This artless prayer of an unknown lady was fully in accord with the spirit of the meeting. Nevertheless, things moved, even in Regent’s Park; and, when we had shown that the snakes in the New York Zoological Park were successfully fed on freshly-killed animals, we had the satisfaction of seeing the same less barbarous method adopted at the London “Zoo.”
I once had the advantage of hearing some of the inner history of a large menagerie from the wife of one of the keepers, a charwoman in the house where I was staying, who was of a somewhat loquacious and communicative disposition, the staple of her talk being the adventures of her husband, Johnnie. “Johnnie came home dead-tired last night, sir,” she said on one occasion. “Why was that, Mrs. Smith?” I asked. “Why, sir, he had had to beat the elephant; and after that he was too stiff and tired to take his supper.” My natural inquiry whether the elephant had been able to take his supper was set aside as frivolous.
Knowing something of the profound piety of the keepers at the (London) “Zoo” in relation to snake-feeding, I was pained to learn from this good woman that her husband, who, unfortunately, was not employed in a reptile-department, had “lost his faith,” and for a reason which I think has not before been recorded among the many modern causes of unbelief. “You see, sir, Johnny can never again hold with the Church, after the way he’s seen clergymen going on with girls in the elephant house.”
When speaking of cruel pastimes, I referred to the value of the term “blood-sports” in the many controversies which we waged. Just as the fortunes of a book may be affected by its title, so in ethical and political discussions there is often what may be called a winning word; and where none such is found ready to hand, it is advisable to invent one. Thus the League made good play with “flagellomania,” as used by Mr. Bernard Shaw in one of his lectures; and “brutalitarian” (an invention of our own, I think) did us yeoman service, as will be seen in a later chapter. “Murderous Millinery,” another term which has gained a wide circulation, was first used as a chapter-heading in my Animals’ Rights; and though it rather shocked some zoophilists of the older school, who presumably thought that only a human being can be “murdered,” it served a useful purpose, perhaps, in drawing attention to the revolting cruelty that underlies the plumage trade. In its condemnation of these barbarities, as in other matters, the Humanitarian League was a pioneer; its pamphlet on “The Extermination of Birds,” written by Miss Edith Carrington, and published nearly thirty years ago, played a marked part in the creation of a better public opinion; and a Bill drafted by the League in 1901, to prohibit the use of the plumage of certain rare and beautiful birds, attracted very wide public attention, and was the basis of subsequent attempts at legislation. But here it must be added that the man who has done more than all the Societies together to insure the passage of a Plumage Bill is Mr. James Buckland. Nothing in the humanitarian movement has been finer than the way in which Mr. Buckland forced this question to the front and made it peculiarly his own.
Every whit as savage as the feather-trade is the fur-trade, responsible as it is for some most horrible methods of torture—the steel-trap, which inflicts shocking injuries on its victim; the spring-pole, which jerks both trap and captive high in air, there to hang till the trapper next comes on his rounds; the terrible “dead-fall” used for bears and other large animals; the poisoning of wolves with strychnine; and the abominations in the butchery of seals. Even the fashionable people who wear furs (in a climate where there is not the least need of such clothing) would hardly be able to continue the habit if they knew how their “comforts” were provided; as it is, the Feather-Headed Woman is not a commoner sight in our streets than the Ass in the skin of the (Sea) Lion. It would seem that fur-wearers are almost unconscious that their sables and sealskins are the relicts of previous possessors, and, like the heroines of modern drama, have very decidedly had “a past”; or, if they do not wholly forget this fact, they think it quite natural that they should now have their turn with the skin, as the animal had before. Thus Pope, in a well-known couplet:
Know, Nature’s children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.
One would have thought that the bear who grew the skin had somewhat more right to it than the monarch! Politicians may talk of “one man, one vote”; but really, if there is ever to be a civilized state, a programme of “one man, one skin” seems fairer and more democratic.
XII
A FADDIST’S DIVERSIONS
No greyhound loves to cote a hare, as I to turn and course a fool.—Scott’s Kenilworth.
I WONDER how many times, during the past thirty years, we humanitarians were told that we were “faddists,” or “cranks,” or “sentimentalists,” that our hearts were “better than our heads,” and that we were totally lacking in a sense of humour. I feel sure that if I had kept all the letters and press-cuttings in which we found ourselves thus described, they would amount not to hundreds but to thousands; for it seemed to be a common belief among the genial folk whose unpleasant practices were arraigned by us that the Committee of the Humanitarian League must be a set of sour Puritans, sitting in joyless conclave, and making solemn lamentation over the wickedness of the world. Our opponents little knew how much we were indebted to them for providing a light and comic side in a controversy which might otherwise have been just a trifle dull.